THE SOUND OF MUSIC

Mead C. Killion, Ph.D., is blithely playing a little jazz piano in the middle of his 9,000-square-foot Elk Grove Village work space known as Etymotic Research.

At first, the grand piano seems out of place in these laboratory/office surroundings. And then Killion explains the origins of the firm.

Etymotic (pronounced et-eh-MOH-tic) comes from an ancient Greek word meaning "true to the ear." The company develops products for the ear, products that improve hearing and products that protect hearing, and at the moment of the impromptu concert, the walls of Etymotic Research resound with passing pleasure for the hearing.

Killion, 53, could have made music his profession. He is an accomplished musician on the piano and violin and directs a local church choir.

But, as Killion points out, "I was always interested in audio. I put myself through college repairing TVs and installing hi-fis."

The profession Killion chose has kept him involved with many facets of sound.

Killion, the president of Etymotic Research and the holder of 18 U.S. patents, is credited with developing a high-fidelity amplifier used in several dozen hearing aids. And Etymotic produces the Musician's Earplug, which has earned a round of applause from members of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.

After completing his doctorate in audiology at Northwestern University and after almost 22 years as an engineer with Industrial Research Products, Knowles Electronics in Elk Grove Village, he founded his own company in 1983.

He wanted the guiding principle of his business to be: "Making things better for people instead of making money." Ten years later, he says that's still his motto.

While at Knowles, Killion helped design hearing-aid microphones that were also used in lavaliere and boom-type microphones by recording and broadcast studios in the '70s. Then he embarked on a quest for high fidelity in a small, easy-to-wear hearing aid.

(High fidelity means smooth, undistorted output of sound over a range including the high-frequency sounds of speech like "s" and "t" and the harmonics of music.)

He knew that producing a hearing aid that was both easy to wear and delivered high fidelity was possible, but two critical things were lacking: a tiny low-distortion power amplifier that had a low enough battery drain to be practical for use in small hearing aids and a broadcast-quality input amplifier to handle loud voices and a live orchestra without distortion.

He developed the K-AMP (Killion amplifier), which resolves both needs with tiny integrated circuits.

The K-AMP input amplifier also has a bonus feature that hearing aid wearers appreciate: it only amplifies soft sounds.

Loud sounds and sharp sounds, the ones that are most annoying for wearers (clattering dishes, shouting, howling wind and the like) are not amplified. Such sounds pass through unaffected. An automatic circuit operates a volume control and a tone control to give selective treble boost where needed.

It is in the upper range, the higher frequencies (for example, the last two or three octaves on a piano), that the most common hearing loss occurs, the softness or loudness of this range being a critical factor also. Other brands of hearing-aid circuits, known as ASP (automatic signal processing), are now available that adjust loudness and frequency response, reducing low-frequency gain (amplification) as the input level increases. Unfortunately, users say, they give the very loud sounds the greatest treble boost, the very sounds for which they don't need amplification.

"I didn't want to go to the government trough" said Killion, "but our principal investor encouraged me to submit a proposal and we got a grant. Now they (the government agency heading Small Business Innovative Research grants) point with pride to the K-AMP. That's our trademark for the high-fidelity hearing-aid circuit we developed."

The grant had stipulated that the government would have royalty-free use of any products developed with the seed money, notably the K-AMP circuits used in hearing aids, most of which went to the Veterans Administration. Last month, Etymotic Research elected to pay back $4,661 to the National Institutes of Health (through which the grant had been issued) and a like amount to the Veterans Administration.

"We realize it will have only a miniscule effect on the budgets of those institutions," said Killion, "but since the K-AMP was developed with the help of a $550,000 grant from NIH, it's Etymotic's ultimate goal to return the money, earmarked for future hearing aid research."

Killion's company continues to grow. It now has 16 full-time employees and seven part time. Many of the young people are graduates of DeVry Institute of Technology.

Edwin DeVilbiss of Glenview, Killion's partner, came from sales and marketing at Tenneco, a huge conglomerate dealing in gas, oil and farm machinery, among other things.

"Mead and I got together because we wanted to put research and development of new products on an equal footing with international competitors," said DeVilbiss. "It's exciting not to have a job description. Without a rigid structure, we're able to communicate directly. We want our customers to get to the people who design the products. It's a balance of creativity and getting the product out the door and making enough money to stay in business."

DeVilbiss, 50, has become a recent wearer of the K-AMP. He noticed that at crowded events like parties or dinners at restaurants, he was straining to hear individuals above the general noise. "After an evening of it, I was tired and tense. I found first hand that the company's product is as good as I thought."

Etymotic Research also produces a device called the ER-15 or Musician's Earplug. It is designed to safeguard the hearing of instrumentalists, airline pilots, industrial workers, sound crews, restaurant and dance club employees and others who are subjected to noise levels that are higher than health or comfort permits.

Actually, the product is worn in both ears as a custom-fitted pair. It reduces sound evenly without the unpleasant occulusion effect (the hollowness one's own voice produces with one's fingers in one's ears).

Larry Neuman of Chicago's Near North Side uses his Musician's Earplugs regularly. Neuman plays viola in the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. "I sit inside, in front of the wind and brass, and the volume is high. Unlike the soft foam things I've tried, these earplugs don't block out what I want to hear. They just tone it down and keep things equalized. I also wear mine on planes and riding the CTA, which is incredibly loud. I love them."

Bill Buchman, also of Chicago, a bassoonist with the Chicago Symphony, agrees: "I'm in front of the trumpets and trombones. A bassoon is not a loud instrument. The ER-15 lets me hear myself playing and also the entire orchestra so I can correctly perceive my relation to the other instruments."

Lee Lane of Evanston, another viola player with the CSO ,is equally enthusiastic: "We met with our manager to discuss the sound level. We tried baffles and shields and rearranging the chairs, none of which really did much, but then the manager heard of this new product (the ER-15) and the CSO offered to buy them for us, a nice gesture. I've become an everyday user. It's wonderful to reduce sound by 10 decibels equally across the array of pitches. Those other things I tried, foam rubber and gummy plastics, a nuisance. Had to take them out of my ears frequently. With these I can still hear a whisper. If I want it quieter there's an ER-25 that reduces the volume even more. I applaud the product."

With such responsive plugs for its plugs, Etymotic Research appears to have a winner in the Musician's Earplug, the ER-15 and the ER-25, both of which snap into the basic plugs molded to fit into the user's ears. There is also an ER-20 which is available either with a ready-fit eartip or a custom mold.

However, the Musician's Earplug is still relatively unknown, and many of the people who could benefit the most have never heard of it. Anyone interested in the product should consult a hearing specialist.

With maturity, some of the first generation rock musicians have publicly admitted that they have destroyed their hearing with excess volume. Others, whether uninformed or unwilling to lower their decibels or be seen wearing protection, are still at peak risk.

Pete Townshend, guitarist for The Who, stated that his deafness is severe, accompanied by tinnitus (ringing in the ears at various pitches) and warned both listeners and performers that blasting rock concerts are dangerous.

For reference, U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration standards begin at 100 decibels of noise for no more than 2 hours per day without protection. As decibels increase, the length of safe exposure decreases dramatically. Rock concerts often rise into the 110- to 120-decibel stratosphere.

Gail Gudmundsen, Killion's wife of four years and president of Advanced Hearing Systems of Elk Grove Village, is an audiologist. Some of her patients are young people whose hearing has been damaged by thunderous music. Some are players, most are listeners.

"One man in his 30s had a boom box mounted in his truck. Now he can't hear his little daughter speak. He has moderate to severe hearing loss. The amount of loss differs with different people even though they're exposed to the same sound levels."

Prior to going into private practice in 1980, Gudmundsen, 43, was an audiologist at Cook County Hospital. She serves on many local and national boards, recently concluding a five-year stint on the Illinois Consumer Protection Board. She is also past president of the Chicago Speech and Hearing Association.

Sometimes she is teased about prescribing the fruits of her husband's labors. "Hey, I'm a hard sell," she said. "I wouldn't recommend anything my patients weren't happy with and I didn't believe in.

"There are probably 40 different hearing aids using Mead's K-AMP now. The models I dispense are by four or five different manufacturers that I've found to be the best."

Gudmundsen loves her work, from the sophisticated computerized audiological testing to the mixing of the two-part silicone substance used to make the models for custom-molded plugs. "People always say the stuff looks like silly putty."

But for Gudmundsen, the real reward is when patients exclaim, as an elderly lady did recently, "Thank you for making such a difference in my life."

Killion credits his engineering know-how to Elmer V. Carlson of Prospect Heights. Carlson was Killion's mentor at Knowles and the reason he stayed there so long. The Musician's Earplug is Carlson's invention for which Etymotic pays royalties to Knowles.

About Killion, Carlson said: "Mead is the brightest, pleasantest engineer I've had the opportunity of working with, a very intelligent and resourceful optimist who sees the glass as not only half full but fillable. And he has the useful knack of taking an idea and making it work."

Those ideas have earned Killion 18 U.S. patents, plus six pending. Despite his hectic schedule, which includes serving as adjunct professor of audiology at Northwestern University, music is never far from his mind.

Killion directs the Elk Grove Presbyterian Church choir, gets together now and then with other string devotees to play the violin and sometimes appears at the piano in public. He enjoys telling how he "played Peoria's Continental Ballroom" on New Year's Eve two years ago with Norm Ladd's orchestra.

"The regular pianist got sick," he recalled. "I took home his charts and practiced every night for two weeks. Even got through a solo."

So it's not surprising to find his musical bent spilling into his business. Early on, his company developed an insert earphone for speech research and audiological testing.

The design evolved into the ER-4 series for distortion-free stereo listening that compensates for external noise and maximizes hearing safety. The entire dynamic range of a recording can be enjoyed without playing it at an unnaturally high volume.

Distribution of the ER-4 is still being established. Anyone interested may call Etymotic Research at 708-228-0006.

And for Etymotic's future? Ed DeVilbiss, who has a couple of patents of his own, mentions otoacoustic emission testing: "That's for testing people who can't tell you what they hear, such as infants. It involves a pure tone audiometer which doesn't require interaction from the patient."

"It provides diagnostic information on any difficult hearing loss," Killion explains. "We're in the process of trying to design a pocket-size, economically practical, otoacoustical device for screening the workings of an infant's inner ear. And we're continuing to make progress in hearing aids, more flexibility, the abilty to make finer adjustments, and keep the cost down.

"It's been gratifying, the focusing on developing products. It isn't such a bad route to success. And so far, none of the investors has complained."